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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-24 Daily Xml
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ROSEWORTHY CAMPUS

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (15:52): I have just found an article from the Adelaide University announcing the celebration of 125 years of the existence of the Roseworthy campus in South Australia. The celebrations begin on Saturday 18 October with a commemorative service in St Peter's Cathedral, followed by a graduation re-enactment, and the Award of Merit and humanitarian awards which I think have been part of Roseworthy for many of those 125 years.

I acknowledge the great work that has been carried out by Roseworthy Agricultural College, as it was formerly known, throughout the agricultural history of South Australia. The Roseworthy campus, as it is now, as I understand it, was established as a result of a bequest many years ago, and it has become famous throughout Australia for its graduates over a long period of time.

Sadly, the oenology section of Roseworthy was disbanded some years ago, but many of Australia's most notable winemakers were graduates of Roseworthy. South Australia still enjoys a very good reputation for winemakers, but I think that the fellowship and camaraderie by being residential students during the days when the oenology course was run completely from Roseworthy can no longer be repeated. There is a great fellowship amongst those who were students at Roseworthy during that time.

The focus on Roseworthy in latter years has shifted, I think since it was subsumed into a campus for the Adelaide University, as one would expect from any institution that has continued for 125 years. As the now campus director, Professor Phil Hynd states:

Over its 125-year history, Roseworthy has developed an international reputation for excellence in research and teaching in dryland agriculture, natural resources management, winemaking and animal production.

The vision now for the 21st century is to combine internal expertise and external resources to make the campus a hub for information transfer, commercialisation, education and research to service the agricultural industries for the next 125 years. Currently five cooperative research centres, funded by the federal government, are based at Roseworthy: pork, poultry, sheep, beef and bioremediation. Roseworthy is a participant in overseas development aid programs in India, China and Tibet.

It has always concerned me that, since Roseworthy has become much more of a research centre, we have lost what I always thought was a very practical course, which was a graduate diploma in agricultural management. Many farm boys who were to go home to manage farms graduated from that course, which was a two-year full-time residential course, and many of them then went on to complete degrees. That line of education, if you like, has been lost to South Australia and, indeed, has diminished across Australia over the past 10 to 15 years. I think that is a great shame since farming now is a much more commercial enterprise than ever before. I wish Roseworthy my congratulations and best wishes for its 125-year celebrations.

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